Tetsuharu Shimohira a.k.a .Mahal. was raised in the Japanese city of Nara. In his teens, he spent most of his evenings listening to the radio. He listened to NHK-FM radio, which played a healthy mixture of Hip-Hop, Reggae, Rock, Jazz, Soul, Ambient, Techno, Japanese bands, and and other eclectic styles. The radio program’s opening theme was and epic, futuristic jazz tune by Azymuth called “Fly over the Horizon”. This song and band became legendary among those in Japan who were listening. Even today, it still plays a major influence in the sound of .Mahal., along with everything else Tetsuharu was exposed to at the time. At age 18, he moved from Nara to Yokohama, near Tokyo. He began playing in a noise band called “MU” for nearly a year. This is where he learned to play the guitar and had his first experiences with creating music. The band had a strict ‘no record’ policy, so it didn’t make it out of the studio. But the sound was heavily influenced by the father of the drummer, who was a member of the 70’s experimental band “Taj Mahal Travellers”. Almost immediately after his time in the band, he begun to dj in the electronic music scene. This inevitably led to him writing his own music as he wished to further explore the sound he was playing. Some of the music he was into as a dj significantly influenced his own sound as a producer, along with the music he grew up with.